It's June

I made it through three months of early spring without being able to do anything at all in the garden. It's been dry and cool, although today is the first day we hit the mid 80s. Jim watered for me as best he could all spring and we had just three small rain events since April 1.

✃ I cut back by a third the Black Adder agastache in the pot and the Windwalker Red salvia.

Now it's June and I am walking in the boot. I can get out into the yard carefully. I can trim the Virginia Creeper vine, and deadhead a few small things.

It all looks okay, although the plants around the circle garden continue to be puny and barely alive -- the Kannah Creek buckwheats in particular and the tiny Electric Blue penstemon disappoint. The small nepeta is all but gone.

Other circle garden plants like the Mexican sage were just newly planted last year and need to grow on.

I try not to sit on the patio even though I can maneuver out there and the days are fine. I struggle with looking at what needs moving, what to add, pots I want to arrange, what to take out --- and even though I am recovering mobility, I can't do any of it.

I got the kneeler bench and it will help but not quite yet. I can see a day coming soon though, even this month, when I can start to buy some nursery plants and put some pots around. I can see a day coming in July when I can kneel (with support on the kneeler bench) and plant some things and move a couple small plants.

But I won't be able to make real changes even when I feel stable enough on my foot to plant. It's too late to get plants online, most are out of stock til next spring. 

It's June, I'm recovering, it; since out, and I'll just have to wait another year to make design changes.

Going Fast

The yellow peony had its best bloom show ever this year, but it was too early and has completely gone by already. The irises too are over. The pink ones from Andrea bloomed well. I only got two white Immortality irises and they are done now.

I couldn't get out into the garden on the knee scooter or crutches to get decent photos, but I did get a couple shots on the phone from a distance -- not great, but here they are:

Not great shots and it all went by too quickly

The Biokovo geraniums were gorgeous, again too early and they have started to go by now, but I did get a few shots of them as they are starting to fade.

Biokovo geraniums fading but still so pretty

The seedling volunteer columbine I transplanted under the Chinese privet a few years ago is a nice plant now. It is also starting to go by. The original plants in the dining room window garden are puny but they did flower.

Swallowtail transplant

Everything is going by too fast and too soon. It's the roses that are coming out now in mid May and I am able to get down the step from the patio and stagger walk a bit to take some pictures.

June is still weeks away, but they have started.

Playboy has opened a bloom

Red Cascade is flowering

Knockout Blushing Pink has mostly gone by already but should rebloom

Peggy Martin rose, however, is sensibly holding off until closer to June. It is not flowering yet.

Potting Them Up Finally

I've been worrying about the Radio Red autumn salvias that I picked up last fall at Newman's. They've been in their black nursery pots since then, drying out so quickly in the potting medium and I have been fussing over keeping them going all winter and through a too hot March and now into spring.

I do love their deep red flowers. 

I wanted to repot them into good potting soil and put 3 of them in the prairie pot garden at the deck and plant one in the ground. But then my injury happened and that never got done.

I've now lost one -- it's dry and crisp. Good thing I overbought. The other three finally got put into larger pots with good potting soil today. It was a small job but awkward for me in the moon boot and hobbling about. 

I can't get to my potting bench below the railroad ties, so I used a card table in the garage and limped the few steps back and forth to the faucet for water and made a mess of things.

It only took ten minutes and they are now adequately potted up finally.

Drought Tolerant

I'm so tired of constantly reading about "drought tolerant" plants. Every garden design, every plant being profiled is drought tolerant, to the point where the term is meaningless now, it's just what all plants are if they are not bog plants.

What does it even mean to slap that term on every plant, every garden? Does that mean the garden will survive on an inch of rain once a month? Once a week? Winter water? 

Nothing grows with NO water, so how much?

There are obvious desert plants like succulents, cactus and desert scrub shrubs, but almost all others are universally labeled "drought tolerant". Do those plants look great or just not completely die until they get more frequent water? 

What do they look like while they are "tolerating" dry conditions? And how dry? For how long?

From Le Jardinet's blog post of a New Zealand dry garden

Beth Chatto's dry gravel garden is everyone's inspiration and it does have great ideas and examples. She admirably provides no supplemental water. But the average annual rainfall in her dry garden is 20 inches! Air humidity is high. It's England -- the dry side, yes -- but surrounded by ocean and temperate currents.

That is not a dry garden. Also that is not my garden. It's double, almost triple what my garden gets annually in a good year. It is not my cold steppe arid environment. 

Drought tolerant once implied something meaningful. Now it’s broadly applied to:

• Mediterranean plants
• prairie plants
• xeric plants
• dry shade plants
• plants that survive a rainless couple weeks periodically
• and plants that need regular irrigation to look decent

Those are not equivalent categories.

This comment from a post at Le Jardinet in Seattle was interesting. She talks about what a truly drought loving plant could be:

Not drought-resistant, nor drought tolerant but drought-LOVING. An important distinction. If plants are to thrive rather than merely survive or tolerate the conditions we impose on them, this is a strategic mind-shift.

I like that distinction. "Drought tolerant" is as helpful as "plant right side up in soil". It doesn't describe what the plant might look like when you plant it in your garden.

Kneeler

I have been wedded to my knee scooter for months of recovery but eventually I'll be off it, and when that happens this summer I can get back out into the garden. And to garden safely as I continue to heal and gain strength in the leg, I decided I will need . . . another kneeler.

This time a garden kneeler.

They've been around forever and each time I see one I think it's just another piece of equipment to tote around and get in the way. But now? Now I can see the benefit.

The main advantage for me is that it has rails to hang onto as I leverage myself up from the ground. I will really need that to keep from having to push up with my foot to get up.

Protecting the foot from any load or bending is going to be my focus for a long time, even after I am in shoes. 

Andrea came over this week to do a little weeding for me, and she brought hers. She's used it for ages, and as I watched her it made so much sense. 

She was most comfortable seated, reaching down to do things at ground level.

But it flips over and you can kneel on it too, then use the side rails to support yourself getting up.

So I'm going to get one to get ready for summer.

One White Iris

There are fat buds on the pink irises Andrea gave me, but they aren't open yet. The white Immortality irises have sent up one single beautiful bloom so far. It's still only early May. 

← Here it is.

After hot March weather brought everything out too soon, the weather now is more typical, so nights are cold, in the low 40s, sometimes high 30s. 

That's holding things back from fully leafing out or bulking up. Hot weather will do wonders.

And some rain will help, it's been so dry. Most plants look a little shriveled, dry and cold.

The pink Knockout rose in the container in the corner of the patio is blooming -- again, it's only early May. So early.

I'm a little worried that this Knockout rose will be too big for this container. it's a big shrub and vigorous. I grew it by the front door in Connecticut and it got really big.

I hope it will stay the right size and look good in this container in a tight corner. My prior one had fragrance, but so far in this cool spring I haven't noticed any.

Without me in the garden to tidy up and arrange the floppers, weed the unwanted, and trim the leftover winter duff, the garden is looking a little sad. But hopeful enough. 

Hot weather will come. Rain might or might not come. My foot will heal. 

I'll be out to tend things in early July, which seems so far off and well past the spring season, but that's my realistic goal to be able to kneel, get up, carry things and . . . garden.

Same Basic idea

A photo I found on Pinterest has similar elements compared to my space: sandstone flagstones, gray river gravel, a free floating deck, red chairs. Same basic idea, including the use of wildflower looking upright plants tucked in among the stones and gravel and fronting the deck.

It might be A.I. modified, it likely is. But take a look at the photo compared to my deck.

The overall effect of the Pinterest photo is looser, more natural looking. My space seems more structured, even with the same elements.

I'm more constrained, with a smaller space and a stone sitting patio adjacent to the deck, leaving little room for scattering plants together naturally. I have to place my plants in specific bounded spots. 

So I have difficulty getting that loose, meadowy kind of look. But it's interesting to see the same basic design and plant and hardscape ideas executed a little differently.

It's All Too Early

A warm winter and hot March brought too many things into leaf and into bloom way too soon this season. 

🚰 I had to have the irrigation turned on already, on April 24 -- three weeks earlier than normal.

It's still April! Orange geums have been flowering for weeks, the Biokovo geraniums have started to open, the Jupiter's Beard too, and even the tiny armeria -- sea thrift -- is blooming.

The Atlas daisy is too. And the linum flax plants have tiny blue flowers.

But everything looks so sparse and stunted. While March was hot and woke my garden up too soon, April has been cool and windy. Nights are still in the high 30s and low 40s. The plants woke up, but they aren't happy now.

The Virginia creeper vine normally leafs out on May 1, like clockwork. This year it came out too soon and the one night we had a freeze earlier it really zapped the vine. It will recover of course, but right now it is also sparse looking.

I was happy to see my transplanted serviceberry made it. It is opening its leaves slowly. It did not flower, but in future years when it has settled into its new spot, it will.

The transplanted Jackmanii clematis, which I moved next to the rain barrel, did not make it, but I will buy another later in the year when I can get out to plant. 

And the Chocolate Chip ajugas absolutely have to go. I will take them all out when I can get out there. 

They are once again a flat brown mass -- they recovered a bit last year after looking so bad, but not much. 

They had looked great for the first years, flowering well and greening up nicely from 2019 to 2023, but then not so much. The past two years they've looked awful.

Something low-care has to go in this empty spot and there is irrigation. Maybe a sedum ground cover, like 'Angelina'. That should spread out and cover the ground with bright color.

The dark red blob is a small gaura and dark leaved penstemons to the right will contrast nicely with Angelina sedum.

I can't really get out into the back yard or in front to check on things or take photos, but here's one more look at the newly opened up walkway with the rosemary removed. 

I like how cohesive it looks leading to the door, and it's now easy to round the corner on the flagstone path.

Such a strange season, with things out too early in March, but now cool and windy and dry in April, and me unable to do anything outside for weeks yet.